Christmas lights

Tonight we were out trawling the streets of Brisbane stalking houses and stickybeaking everywhere, invading privacy and trampling the grass, yahooing and cavorting through the suburbs.

We were looking at Christmas lights.

That strange obsession that people have to cover their houses in flashing lights and colours and Santas doing all sorts of crazy things, and then they let other people come and look at it all.  We must have seen thousands and thousands of dollars worth of lights tonight.

It appeared that bubbles were the 'it' item for all the cool kids at the lights party - nearly every house had a bubble machine working in the front yard filling the air with soapy wonder.

My two girls loved looking at the lights, but I tired of it quickly, and almost felt a little seizure coming on from the flashing sparkles.  We went to two streets in Belmont and Tingalpa where nearly every house on the whole street was decorated and people wandered up and down marvelling.  I felt solidarity with the dark house, the non-participants - the neighbourhood pressure must be enormous.

I like lights.  But like the very bright shiny objects they are, they are a huge distraction from what Christmas is celebrating - the slipping into the world of a tiny baby who was the very light of the world himself.